In general, a silver halide color photographic material comprises, on a support, a multilayered light-sensitive layer consisting of three silver halide emulsion layers selectively sensitized to be sensitive to blue light, green light and red light, respectively. For example, a so-called color photographic paper (here-in-after referred to as "color paper") normally comprises a red-sensitive emulsion layer, a green-sensitive emulsion layer and a blue-sensitive emulsion layer in this order as viewed from the exposed side. Furthermore, an interlayer, such as protective layer and the like for the purpose of inhibiting color stain and absorbing ultraviolet light may be provided between the sensitive layers.
In order to form a color photographic image, photographic couplers for three colors, i.e., yellow, magenta and cyan are incorporated in a light-sensitive layer so that the light-sensitive material which has been exposed to light can be color-developed with an aromatic primary amine color developing agent. An oxidation product of the aromatic primary amine undergoes a coupling reaction with these couplers to give colored dyes. The coupling rate should be as high as possible. These couplers preferably exhibit an excellent coloring property so that it provides a high color density in a limited period of time. Furthermore, these colored dyes are required to be sharp cyan, magenta and yellow dyes which exhibit little subsidiary absorption and which give a color photographic image with an excellent color reproducibility.
On the other hand, the color photographic image thus formed is required to exhibit an excellent preservability under various conditions. In order to fullfill this requirement, it is essential that colored dyes with different hues exhibit a low deterioration or decoloration rate and the deterioration rate be as uniform as possible over all image density areas so that the color balance on the dye image shows no change.
To this end, so-called pyrazoloazole type magenta couplers as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,540,654 and 4,882,266 have been employed. Thus, color prints with excellent sensitometric characteristics, excellent reproducibility particularly in color red, little stain and excellent image preservability can be obtained.
On the other hand, yellow couplers which have heretofore been used have numerous disadvantages. For example, the maximum absorption wavelength of colored dye formed therefrom normally lies in the wavelength zone longer than that desired in view of color reproducibility. Moreover, the absorption in the long wavelength zone longer than 500 nm doesn't sharply drop to zero. Thus, these yellow couplers leave much to be desired in terms of reproducibility in hues such as yellow and green. In order to eliminate these difficulties, it has been proposed to use a coupler which produces a yellow dye that exhibits a maximum absorption in a relatively short wavelength range as disclosed in JP-A-1-173499 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application").
However, it has been found that when the above mentioned magenta coupler, particularly a magenta coupler with an effective coupling rate, and the above mentioned short wavelength type yellow coupler are used in combination, the color photograph thus formed exhibits a high density, little fog and an excellent color reproducibility but suffers from a color stain problem. In particular, the magenta density in yellow images increases during the prolonged storage of color photograph. It has thus been desired to maintain excellent color reproducibility during the storage of images.